Mississippi may soon face a ‘huge gap’ in disaster recovery funding when the Trump administration follows through with its plan to raise the threshold for public assistance.
Mississippi Today reports the administration of President Donald Trump’s is proposing raising the threshold a state’s damages have to reach to qualify for public assistance funds for road, bridge and government building repairs after a disaster.
State emergency officials saw the numbers rolling down from the federal level and alerted Mississippi lawmakers, warning them that had Trump’s cuts already been in effect, the state would have missed out on federal support for 18 of the last 28 declared disasters, causing an estimated loss of $163 million.
In its hurry to eviscerate federal programs, Trump officials proposed quadrupling Mississippi’s public assistance threshold from $5.5 million to $22 million. Of course, upping the threshold that severely makes it much harder for the impoverished Republican-majority state to qualify for federal help — which already only kicks in when a state cannot afford the costs of recovering from a disaster by itself.
“If that does get increased, which we are expecting to happen, there will be a huge gap between what MEMA (Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) can do to assist the citizens of this state,” MEMA’s Chief of Staff Crystal Thompson told lawmakers.
With Trump pulling financial support, the agency is already proposing legislation to fill the void. Two proposals would create state managed versions of FEMA’s Public Assistance and Individual Assistance programs. The bills, one authored by Rep. Clay Deweese (R-Oxford) and Sen. Josh Harkins (R-Flowood) do not set aside a specific budget for filling the budget hole Trump left, however.
“What we’re doing with that legislation is simply a preparation mechanism. It puts something in place so that, if the Legislature has to come back into session to fund it, we have a plan in place to where we can assist the locals,” Thompson told Mississippi Today.
Thanks to steep cuts in government jobs and rampant privatization by anti-government lawmakers, Mississippi is already having to consider investing $1 billion to shore up its hollowed out, publicly-funded retirement plan. But now, even as legislators ponder where to find an extra $160 million for emergency repairs, Mississippi Today reports lawmakers are having to deal with Trump freezing a 2025 Emergency Management Performance Grant. That freeze is forcing administrators to request an additional $2.7 million from the state Legislature.
“(The counties) need this money,” Thompson told the room of senators.
Read the Mississippi Today report at this link.